Back to regular programming

In Europe, they have Easter Monday, so I had a rare, much-needed four-day weekend for Holy Week. It was half the rest I needed, but double the fun because my niece’s nanny decided to pack her bags and leave without any advance notice.

She just dropped off Keona at our house with her usual bag of necessities like milk powder, baby bottles, extra clothes, and told my mother she was just going to the store. We haven’t seen nor heard from her since. This meant, of course, that in the three days it took for us to find a replacement nanny, I got to play babysitter to a precocious, almost three-year-old child, who insists I “shower in the rain” with her every time I give her a bath. “Take off your dress, Auntie Dat,” she would keep saying, until I would finally relent.

Keona has a new nanny now, a 19-year-old girl, incidentally from my maternal grandfather’s province Cebu, thank goodness, so there’s hope yet for her to pick up Cebuano while she’s young. The only Cebuano word I’ve heard her say is lubot, which she would say every time her mommy would touch her butt and ask, “What’s this, baby girl?” “That’s my lubot,” Keona would reply. Then again, she can also say butt in Ilocano, her paternal grandmother’s language. “That’s my obet,” she would also say.

The only drawback was that the only DVD I managed to watch that was on my Holy Week must-watch list was Wall-E, which she didn’t particularly enjoy, because she’d recently discovered dinosaurs in a VCD of The Land Before Time my sister dug up from among our old VCD collection and she wanted to watch it again and again. This was funny, because at first she didn’t want to watch it, and her mommy had to force her to do so.

Her constantly being around me meant I couldn’t watch the horror films and thrillers I’d borrowed from my friend Jenny so I could play catch up with all the wonderful movies I’d missed.

The Land Before Time, produced by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and husband and wife Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, was released in 1988 when my baby sister was only a little older than her daughter now. I had bought her the DVD as a Christmas gift years back, before she even got pregnant, because we had both loved the film and its theme song, “If We Hold on Together,” sung by Diana Ross.

This animated film is one of my favorites because it puts Littlefoot and other young herbivores in a situation where they’re supposed to be brave and independent because they are all alone, without adult dinosaurs to take care of them and bring them to the Great Valley. It also deals with the death of a parent—in this case, Littlefoot’s mother, who saves him from a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s attack. The film touched on and probably offered some comfort for my sister’s and my early fears of abandonment because we only had one major caregiver with us, my mother, who also worked, because my father had a job abroad.

I didn’t realize it until after, but perhaps it also helped Keona adjust to the sudden loss of one of her main caregivers, the one she spent most hours with on weekdays. Her Ate Tin had been with her since she was three months old, so she knew no other Ate. For what it’s worth, her Ate Tin was a nice girl, so I’m guessing she bade Keona a proper goodbye before she packed her clothes and left.

For her part, Keona only asked for her Ate once, and never again, after we explained she had gone home and Keona would have another Ate to play with. She did, however, suddenly show streaks of independence. One time, her mother left her on the toilet bowl and told her to just call out when she was finished. She didn’t do it, and we only realized she was done when we heard her pouring water on the floor. She was attempting to wash herself.

One time, I was putting her to sleep and noticed she had finished all her milk. I asked her if she wanted more, and instead of saying yes, which she used to do, sometimes even in a demanding tone with her Ate Tin, she got up and pulled out her milk powder from her backpack. I wasn’t quite sure what she had in mind—until the next night her daddy caught her trying to make her own milk. Poor baby girl. Or, as my mother would say, kalooy.

Being her full-time nanny was fun while it lasted. I successfully taught her how to draw a smiley face with a tongue sticking out and to eat cream cheese. But now, it’s back to regular programming and Maricel Soriano’s latest film T2 is on top of my must-see list.

P.S. Slumdog Millionaire is showing. If you haven’t seen it, make sure to watch it. Bring a friend, preferably someone you can hold hands with.